Some Selfish Wishes
by sashp
Summary: A reflection on the childhoods of Hermione, Ron, and Harry, and those small selfish wishes each child has.


Oh dear, I'm back aren't I? Well, these new stories have all been posted on my livejournal, but I wanted to widen the spectrum of my feedback.

Remember, I do not own HP.

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There were never any cookies before dinner in the Granger household. It was just one of the many sweet-related things that just weren't done. Whenever Hermione went to a friend's house, most often Jenny Gleason's, they had a sweets jar right on the counter, filled to the brim with McVittie's and chocolate bars.

This severe lack of sugar before nutrition was something that the daughter of two dentists was accustomed to from an early age. While many kids would have yelled and begged for a biscuit in order to keep their appetite before having to gulp down liver or spinach, Hermione was not a normal child, and she respected the boundaries put up by her parents, and even attempted to only eat sweets once in awhile. She valued her dental health; her parents were smart people, and if it was important to them it should be important to her.

On the opposite spectrum, because of the Granger mother and father's intelligence, there was never a lack of books in their abode. Of course, some of them were large tomes on bicuspids and gum disease, but many were of different varieties: biographies, pirates, princesses, atlases, dictionaries, romances, war stories.

As a four or five or even ten year old, Hermione didn't care much for war stories about places she'd never heard of, but all the other books, even the dictionaries, were free reign for her. She scoured the pages of the biographies, drank up the stories of Blackbeard and his gang of pirates, and read fictional interpretations of Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth the First.

When she received her Hogwarts letter, she hoped there were carrots and big books in the school, or she would have come right home.

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With two parents, seven children, and a plethora of chickens and gnomes, there was no privacy, in any form at the Burrow. Everywhere Ron went, Ginny followed him out of a want to be included or the twins just wanted to prank him into tripping down the stairs.

His mum was always trying to keep order, and never had time to talk to Ron unless there was at least one other person in the room. Everyone flocked, including Mrs. Weasley, to his dad when he arrived home from work.

Sometimes though, he talked to Percy in the older boy's room, when Percy's eyes hurt too much from reading. Even though they never had much in common, they both enjoyed that sense of quiet and warmth that can come from one on one conversation.

Despite the Burrow having an over abundance of ruckus, Ron loved one minute detail of his house above many others: the soft, fuzzy carpets reaching from his sitting room all the way up to his upper floor bedroom.

Whenever the family packed up and visited an aunt or uncle, Ron missed the feeling of his bare feet being tickled by the older, worn out, and faded carpeting that only a house of the Burrow's caliber could possess.

When his own letter arrived, as all those Weasley letters do, upon his birthday, Ron hoped that, even though his brothers never said so, there was a room full of less nosy boys and plush carpets at Hogwarts.

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Even if Dudley hadn't forced almost every single kid at their shared Primary school into not hating or avoiding him, Harry guessed that the kids wouldn't have wanted to spend time with him anyway. What kid would want to talk with a boy who wasn't allowed to play with toys or watch TV and movies?

Which is just what Harry Potter could not do. There was no evening television for him inside his cupboard, and he was shipped off to Mrs. Figg's house whenever a movie that Dudders and Piers wanted to see (even the messy rated 15 ones). When the newest toys were unleashed upon the market, Dudley of course received everyone he wanted, while Harry was stuck with the older models that no other child would find interesting to talk about anymore.

And although he was forced into the cupboard under the stairs, on clear nights he was allowed to sit outside when the Dursleys wanted him to get some 'fresh air'. The night clouds were milky and puffy, and the stars twinkled sweetly in the sky. Harry would run his fingers through the grass and look out for shooting stars or the phases of the moon.

So, after having to spend days fighting for one, when Hagrid came and delivered his Hogwarts letter, Harry hoped that wizards were just a bit outdated and nature freaks in the same vein as him.


End file.
